Our collection

«His salvation lies in the guide’s announcement of further beauties within its halls, which he discovered, in such numbers it would take a book to describe them all: Dom João’s silver altar and the coat of chain mail he wore in Aljubarrota; the “Santas Mães” [Holy Mothers], the eighteenth-century “Fuga para o Egypto” [Flight into Egypt], the “Santa Maria a Formosa” [St Mary the Beautiful] by Master Pero, “Nossa Senhora e o Menino” [Our Lady and the Little Boy] by António Vaz, with their open book, the apple and the two birds, and the picture by Brother Carlos of “SS Martin, Sebastian and Vincent” – and a thousand other wonders in painting, sculpture, ceramics and silverware. The traveller’s final conviction is that the Alberto Sampaio Museum contains among the loveliest of collections of sacred objects on display in Portugal, less for the quantity than for the exceptional aesthetic quality of the vast majority of the pieces, many of them truly first-class. This museum merits any number of visits, and this particular visitor swears to return every time he passes through Guimarães.” José Saramago, Journey to Portugal 

The collection of the museum is almost entirely of local provenance and of ancient art, fitting perfectly in the architectonic spaces it is exhibited in. Its first director, Alfredo Guimarães, managed to enlarge, gradually and in a significant way, the collections that already existed, both by acquiring new pieces, having counted on the support of several institutions, namely the City Hall of Guimarães and the Governo Civil do Distrito de Braga, and by managing that people and institutions deposited pieces of relevant value in the Museum.